The entire tech world is riveted, or soon will be riveted, by an event kicking off today, TechCrunch40. A brain child of meteroic blogger Mike Arrington and serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, TechCrunch40 is a Demo-type conference featuring 40 (it started out with 20) Silicon Valley start-ups.
All the mainstream tech reporters and top bloggers will be there to watch the 40 start-ups display their wares, and 100 additional companies will try to attract attention from something called the Demo Pit. A blog devoted solely to the event is here. A who's who of Silicon Valley helped shape TechCrunch40 and some seriously blue-chip sponsors are paying the tab. An A-list of established and emerging tech moguls are speaking there.
Even better: 800 people have paid $2,500 to attend this event and there's a waiting list to get in.
It may very well be that the 40 companies picked to display at this event are nothing more than frothy little things that won't go anywhere. My guess is that very few will be left standing two years from now. As Mark Evans points out, one of the "start-ups" demo'ing at TechCrunch40 is Flock, the social web browser that debuted in 2005 and promptly failed.
The real news from TechCrunch40 is how massively successful the event itself is and the big question in my mind is: how much dough are Arrington and Calacanis raking in from this baby? Let's see...if 800 people purchased tickets at $2,500/pop, that's a cool $2 million right off the bat. Assume the sponsors coughed up at least $500,000, although I'd bet the sponsor cash is more than that. Demo pit companies were charged half the regular fee, or $1,247.50 per pop, for an additional $124,750.
So that's $2.6 million, give or take a few hundred thousand, that will flow to Arrington and Calacanis. The costs of hosting the event can't be that high, and my guess it that The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, where the event is being held, will get around $500,000 for meals, exhibit space and other expenses. That leaves a profit of $2.1 million, give or take a few hundred thousand.
The 40 start-ups who are demo'ing at the event, then, may not be the brightest prospects that Silicon Valley has to offer. The real money-makers could end up being Arrington and Calacanis.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:09 AM|Comments(0)
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